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Here is an author who became entranced with anarchism after reading an essay by Emma Goldman while an under-graduate. She was "disillusioned with the broken promises of [her] liberal upbringing" and Goldman captured both her "heart" and her "mind."
Her discovery of anarchism, at first seen by her as completely compatible with Marxism, led her to practical involvement with the anarchist movement in Toronto. At the same time she became involved with feminist studies. Here too she found disturbing trends towards ideological repression. These experiences led ultimately to a decision to undertake a critical consideration of the political philosophy of liberal feminism.
In her thesis Brown uses a framework which enables her to explore the contradictions in liberalism between what she calls existential and instrumental individualism. She then argues that if liberalism's instrumentally competitive aspects were replaced with free and voluntary association, anarchism would be the result. Her simple definition of anarchism is that it is a way of organizing society to best allow for the free expression of individuals.
From the start I felt a little uneasy about this somewhat simplistic notion. What about the dangers of individualism? What about "no one is an island?" After all, Brown wishes us to gain fresh insights into certain social movements-in particular, feminism-in order to bring liberation closer. She argues that we will never understand the true nature of the individual while we live with...